a wish your heart makes
by TolkienGirl
Summary: Everyone has dreams. (Playlist-shuffle fic-random lyrics paired with drabble-length fics. Ladies of OUAT edition-Emma, Snow, Regina, and Belle) (Canon pairings).


**A/N: Decided to play around again with some shuffle-playlist lyrics and short fics. This time focusing on the ladies of OUAT! Canon pairings, no slash.**

 _i._

 _The rest of the world was black and white, but we were in screaming color._

(Out of The Woods, Taylor Swift)

There's something wonderful about a secret, even if it makes your heartbeat crash in your ears whenever your mother's smile seems too knowing.

It isn't that you _want_ to keep it from her. You want nothing more than to tell her everything, show her how happy he makes you. How happy you could always be—and not just you, but your family.

 _Power isn't everything,_ you would tell her, if you were brave enough.

If.

If only you could tell her how the wind sings around you when you ride, how your favorite memories of her are those where she is laughing, how you feel like a broken thing made whole when Daniel holds you in his arms.

But secrets were made to be broken.

 _ii._

 _And I'll never go home again…_

(Buzzcut Season, Lorde)

Sometimes, before she goes to sleep, she remembers the hot blank glow of the streetlights shimmering on the pavement, and how the watches were heavy in her hands.

It's almost her worst memory, top five for sure, and the mix of pain and fear and _no, not like this_ is too cruel and too raw, even after all these years. Nights like that, she pulls her pillow over her head and tries to block out the sounds that aren't there—clinking handcuffs and prison doors, closing, closing, closing.

But it's hard to forget how she froze so very still and quiet, thinking (strangely, unexpectedly) in that moment how Tallahassee was just another name for Neverland.

 _Where all the children go…the children without parents…_

And in that moment, Emma Swan grew up.

 _iii._

 _Nobody said it was easy…oh, take me back to the start_

(The Scientist, Coldplay)

It hits her when she has a mug of tea in her hand, hot and steaming and ready to drink. A perfect picture out of nowhere, the sound of a man's warm, golden voice and the way his eyes crinkled up when he laughed.

It's a nice image, but it hurts somewhere under her ribs and if the tea wasn't so hot as to make her cautious, she might have been silly enough to drop it.

Mary Margaret shakes her head, drinks her tea, and goes back to her book. But the pages are terribly flat and uninteresting, and her evening is ruined.

She leaves the light on for a while that night, keeps trying to pin down that voice, that smile, those eyes. She can't remember, and then she starts wondering if she can remember anything.

 _Go to sleep,_ she tells herself. _Dreams weren't made for daytime._

In the morning she'll wake up with a smile on her lips (if not in her eyes) and think nothing of it.

 _iv._

 _We'll touch the other side, just give me the key_ (Why Don't We Go There, One Direction)

It's not that she doesn't trust him, it's that she _does_. That's what scares the hell out of her.

He drew her out when they were climbing, and he helped her find the compass, and he did things with his mouth, tying that scarf around her hand, that shouldn't be legal in any realm.

So she does the worst thing to him that anyone's ever done to her, and she leaves him.

It's the only way to push him away (leaving does that, builds an anger in you so dark and bitter that coming back doesn't cure it), and telling the giant to spare him might save his life but it won't make him forgive her.

(Surely, it can't. He can't forgive her).

If he forgives her, she might have to keep trusting him. And who knows where that might lead?

 _v._

 _I'm at home  
On my own  
Check my phone  
Nothing though  
Act busy  
Order in  
Pay TV  
It's agony_

(Big Girls Cry, Sia)

Emma Swan doesn't have depression. She went to a therapist once—damn stupid mistake, and one she'll never repeat—and the bastard might have said something about it. She's never believed it.

Depression's more than dishes in the sink for a week straight, a weight in her chest that feels like crying but never gets around to it. Depression's more than alcohol now and then, taking the edge off. (So many edges). Depression's more than one cupcake on her birthday, no letters in her mailbox, no lights ever bright enough.

Depression's— _more._

She's just lonely. That's all.

 _vi._

 _When the night is coming down on you, we will find a way through the dark_

(Through The Dark, One Direction)

The universe is a cruel beast, to tell the same story over and over again.

She's every kind of fool, the kind of girl to be scoffed at, the kind of heroine who reads books but never makes it into one.

She's a dreamer without any right to dream.

Sometimes, Belle is strong. She tells him time and again that it's over, and she tells herself that nothing is real, nothing is true, there is no world to save big enough to assure that he's really saved himself.

But sometimes, she falls. She falls down, falls short, and falls in love with her Beast again.


End file.
